


Face Value

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Angst, Curses, Denial of Feelings, Honesty, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining, Possibly Unrequited Love, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-06-30 04:05:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15743913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "'The great manipulator Orihara Izaya brought down by...what, some forced honesty?' Namie laughs again. 'That’s the most ironic thing I’ve ever heard.'" Izaya finds himself stripped of his favorite means of manipulation and is forced to face up to more unpleasant truths than he realized he was hiding from himself.





	1. Brutal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aerynevenstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerynevenstar/gifts).



Izaya doesn’t realize, at first, that anything is wrong.

It comes over him slowly, as he wakes. He’s usually quick to rise, sitting up with the first jolt of his alarm and standing under the spray of his shower within five minutes of slipping free of the bedsheets; but he wakes early, this morning, stirring up towards consciousness even before the electronic beep at his phone begins to summon him to the day. Normally he would sit up at once, reach to shut his pending alarm off and rise to begin his day immediately, however early it might be; but this morning he floats gently to the surface of reality and hovers there for some time, lying under the weight of his blankets while his thoughts run dizzy circles around themselves in his mind.

 _I could sleep in a little longer_ , he reflects as he stares at the edge of his phone without really seeing it. _I could shut off my alarm entirely if I wanted. It’s not as if I have anything that really needs to be done first thing this morning_. The thought is strangely clear, as if he’s seeing a basic fact of reality he’s never noticed before; as if the thousand tiny choices that mark out the _musts_ of his life are laid bare as the options they truly are. Izaya lies where he is, watching his phone and thinking about reaching to see what time it is to judge his next steps. But _I don’t really care_ , he admits, and turns over to lie on his back instead so he can stare up at the familiar ceiling overhead instead. _I’m just going to keep on lying here anyway. Better to not know how much longer I have to be lazy_. He lets his gaze wander the ceiling, trailing along the patterns of shadow formed by the curtain at the window shifting gently in the breeze from his murmuring fan, seeing the ripples of light form and dissipate as if splashes in water. There’s an ache low down in his belly, a knot of some half-familiar heat; as Izaya goes on watching the illumination on the ceiling he realizes he’s hard against the weight of his sheets, his cock swollen heavy with the half-awake arousal that comes with the first several minutes of waking. It’s strange to notice, when he usually turns aside to ignore it outright as if it weren’t happening at all; stranger still to have the luxury of a few uncounted minutes of freedom, if he wishes to use them. He could reach down to slide his grip around himself, could stroke slow and languid into the arched-back gasp and strain of orgasm, to make use of this unmeasured span; it wouldn’t take long, he thinks idly as he fits a hand under the sheets and trails his fingers down the span of his chest and towards the dip of his hip. A fantasy would be easy to come by, the structure of it is already shaping itself in his mind, he could--

His alarm goes off. Izaya jumps, more startled than he would have been by the door of his bedroom opening and an intruder walking in on him, and he jerks his hand away to shove himself upright in the lonely emptiness of his bed. The blankets fall around his hips, weighting to distraction against the heat of his cock, but his attention is on his phone as he reaches out to shut off the persistent whine of his alarm. That done he considers returning to his previous occupation, to resuming where he left off; but habit wins out over indulgence, and Izaya leaves his arousal to ease with time instead of satisfaction as he climbs out of bed to pad across the room to the cool tidiness of his bathroom.

Bathing is a matter of routine, a process so well-defined Izaya hardly thinks at all about the steps of it. Brushing his teeth, rinsing his skin, standing dripping on his scale to weigh himself before toweling his hair to dry so he can brush it to shining smooth: he hardly notices any of this, except to reference his weight against yesterday’s number and satisfy himself that today’s is within expectations. Dressing is as simple a matter: his preference for black makes his choices obvious, and it’s hardly been a half-hour since his alarm went off by the time he’s downstairs and in his kitchen making himself a cup of tea. His routine carries him smoothly forward, stepping over any potential obstacles like they’re not even there, until he has a pot of tea on the counter and a cup of the same in his hand and is settling himself down at his computer to begin working through the messages that accumulated during the few hours he spent lost to the haze of sleep.

There’s not much worth noting. There’s a thanks from the Awakusu-kai, a brief note of gratitude from none other than Shiki himself for Izaya’s assistance in returning a valuable item that had gone missing from their stores. Izaya’s pleased with the personal thanks; he hardly cares, in most instances, but Shiki is among the closest of his business associates, and with Celty and Shinra absent from the city on another one of the latter’s absurd “honeymoons” Izaya had been forced to deal with the situation personally. He hadn’t minded as much as he expected to -- there’s something enjoyable about doing things himself, even if it involves the risk that comes with breaching the line between Shinjuku and Ikebukuro -- but it’s still pleasant to know that someone other than himself is paying enough attention to notice this extra effort and to thank him for it. Izaya opens up a reply message, intending to write out a brief, flippant answer to Shiki’s comment.

 _It’s always a pleasure working with you and yours, Shiki-san_ , Izaya’s fingers offer to the computer screen. _I do relish the opportunity to help whenever I can, in consideration of our lengthy acquaintance._ The words spill from his fingers as if they belong to someone else, offering appreciation and gratitude without Izaya’s prompting, until Izaya finally manages to pull his hands free of the keys so he can stare at his computer screen instead. The words blink back at him, dark text against the light background, unmistakable in their meaning but not what he had intended to put there, not what he had meant to say. Izaya frowns, reaching for the keyboard to select and delete the message so he can begin again; but the words catch at him once more, dragging free of his fingers with a speed as if he’s possessed. He jerks away, frowning first at the screen and then at his hands, gazing at them as if they might be able to offer some explanation for this sudden, unprecedented betrayal, but they look just as they always have, elegant and slender and unmarked by so much as a cut.

“Was it the statue?” Izaya asks himself, speaking aloud without thinking as he turns his hands over and pulls his sleeves back to look at his wrists. Shiki had been less than forthcoming about the exact purpose of the item he hired Izaya to collect on behalf of the Awakusu-kai; in context his warning about avoiding fingerprints had seemed no more than an unusually concerned reminder to avoid leaving any trace as to the actual identity of the liberator of the object in question. Izaya had certainly taken it as metaphor, as so much of his conversations with Shiki are; but now he can recall the weight of polished wood against his palm as if it’s a drumbeat of doom, the memory swimming up to mark his skin with some unknown effect.

“Damn you, Shiki,” Izaya murmurs under his breath, and he reaches for his keyboard again. The words come more easily this time, now that he’s not fighting them, and align so nearly with his inner monologue that they seem almost to fall from his thoughts to the screen before him.

 _Did you send me out after some cursed statue? I don’t feel entirely myself this morning and I’m sure it’s the result of the task I took from you._ Izaya grimaces at the text, pained by the blunt inelegance of the lines, but his fingers are still moving, and there’s something to be learned in the application of this...truth spell? Sincerity curse? that seems to have taken hold of him. _With all the work we’ve done together I would expect you to know how inconvenient forced truth would be in everything I do. If you knew what the thing did you ought to have given me a more direct warning_. Izaya flinches again and moves to delete the last line, to reframe it to a more politic threat rather than directly calling out one of the officers of the Awakusu-kai, but he can’t lay hands to the words even in his head. It’s as if the poetry that language has always been to him has given way to leave him mute and struggling around the weight of his own tongue even in the space of his head, until he can’t manage anything less direct than the blunt-force aggression of the anger rapidly rising to tension across his shoulders as he struggles and fails to lay hand to the words he needs.

“Damn it,” he hisses, and deletes another row of text. “What the hell--”

The door to his apartment opens. Izaya doesn’t look up to see who it is; there’s only one person who would have the key to let themselves in unannounced as the newcomer just has, after all, and only one person with any reason at all to deliberately seek out his company. Izaya hisses at the addition of that last thought, sharp as a razor turned against his own skin even in the space of his head, but from across the distance of the room Namie doesn’t hear or doesn’t care enough to react to his discomfort.

“Morning,” she calls, her back to Izaya as she turns over the deadbolt in the door behind her. “Working already?”

“I’m not working,” Izaya blurts. “I’m dealing with a crisis.” He takes a breath and huffs it out in a humorless laugh. “Not _dealing_ with it. I’m panicking about a problem that Shiki caused for me.”

Namie looks back at him over her shoulder, her eyebrow raising high as she considers Izaya from across the distance of the room. “That’s unusually honest of you,” she says, with something that might be the faintest edge of amusement under her voice. “Did you turn over a new leaf?”

“I couldn’t help it,” Izaya says. “I can’t do anything else.”

Namie snorts and looks back to her feet so she can slip her shoes carefully off by the entryway. “Did you finally realize how much trouble you cause to everyone else and grow a conscience?” She slides her purse off her shoulder to set at the table alongside the door so she can lean over it in search of the phone she keeps within easy reach of her at all times. “Maybe I’ll be lucky and you’ll finally break off this charade of employment.”

“That’s unlikely,” Izaya hears himself say. “You’re the closest thing to a friend I have in my day-to-day life. Even if I have to pay you to keep you around, I’d rather have someone to listen to me instead of talking to myself.” He snaps his mouth shut on the words, feeling the blood rush to his face as he keeps his gaze fixed on the screen of his computer instead of looking up to meet Namie’s gaze, but it doesn’t help much. He can still see the motion of her hair as her head turns sharply towards him, can feel the force of her stare against the top of his head like a blow.

“Wow,” she says at last. “That’s even more pathetic than I wanted to hear, and I knew that already.”

“I know,” Izaya says before he can flinch himself to silence.

Namie’s laugh cuts through the apartment with all the merciless edge of a knife. “This is _rich_ ,” she says. Her footsteps come forward from the entryway; Izaya glances up from over the barrier of his computer to glare at her, but her bitter smile doesn’t so much as quiver. “The great manipulator Orihara Izaya brought down by...what, some forced _honesty_?” She laughs again. “That’s the most ironic thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Laugh all you like,” Izaya manages to spit out. “Shouldn’t you be worried too? If anyone asks me about you before I can get it undone you’ll be in a whole lot of trouble with your darling corporation.”

“I’m not concerned about Nebula,” Namie says with cool dignity. “They have no reason to ask you the same questions you already answered months ago, and you won’t tell anyone about me if you can help it.” Her mouth pulls up on a smirk that doesn’t touch her eyes. “You just said yourself you’re desperate to keep me around, isn’t that right?”

Izaya grimaces. “Yes,” he grates out. The sound seems to pull from the inside of his chest, as if the honesty is some separate force breaking free of his body to give itself voice; holding it back is as agonizing as trying to stab himself with a knife to keep it in place, and apparently as ineffective as it is painful. “I don’t have anyone else who will put up with me.” Namie coughs another laugh, as if her amusement is being forced out of her as surely as Izaya’s sincerity. Izaya glares at her with as much threat as he can possibly fit into the expression. “You are the _last_ person I want to talk to right now.”

Namie snorts. “Liar,” she says. “You _have_ to tell the truth and even now you’re lying.” She braces her hands at the edge of Izaya’s desk and leans in to smirk at him. “I’m sure there’s _someone_ you’d hate to know about this even more than me.”

Izaya shakes his head, keeping his thoughts firmly fixed on Namie before him; she raises an eyebrow as high as it will go without retreating. “Really? In all of Shinjuku? All of Ikebukuro?”

Izaya can feel the moment the realization hits. It comes with the shape of the name on Namie’s lips, _Ikebukuro_ curving itself into hearing as she speaks; the thought comes with the name, as immediate as instinct, as unavoidable as some long-past trauma, that fixed point Izaya’s thoughts always circle around in a constant, helpless fall like orbit around the blaze of the sun. Izaya’s vision hazes to gold, his ears ring with the sound of his name dragged into a growl as much invitation as warning, _Izaya-kun_ pulled out into a roar to vibrate through the marrow of his bones, to heat the core of his frozen heart, to melt -- and his lips shift, forming out the name in empty, voiceless horror before he can clap his hands over his mouth to stifle it. His throat locks tight, his chest empties itself into a hollow space of horror; but Namie is leaning forward, and Namie sees, however silent his admission.

“ _Shizuo_ ,” she gasps, and she’s rocking back, her intimidating posture given up with this unexpected victory. Her smile goes wider, her eyes go dark with malicious amusement. “I bet you don’t want to see Heiwajima like this, do you? You’d give away all your plots at once, just for him asking. Or would you admit to how much time you waste stalking him?”

Izaya doesn’t answer. Izaya barely hears Namie’s voice at all. He’s staring at the far side of his apartment, eyes wide and sightless with horror, throat working over sound enough to choke him, but even unvoiced the thoughts are crystal-clear, the images flickering through his head brutal and overwhelming as a blow from one of those tight-clenched fists. Shizuo’s hair golden in the afternoon sunlight, Shizuo’s shoulders tense on rage, Shizuo’s voice tearing raw over Izaya’s name; Shizuo’s mouth soft with inattention, Shizuo’s fingers gentle on the length of a cigarette, Shizuo’s stride unthinkingly elegant down the street before him. Izaya’s blood is going hot, his skin is shimmering with adrenaline, his heart is racing in his chest; and for all the panic in him, all the fear clutching at his throat and seizing against his heart, all the denial that has served him so well for all these years flags and fails at last, collapsing like sand beneath the tsunami of a single careless touch.

“What would you do?” Namie is still talking, oblivious to Izaya’s horror or maybe just not seeing the signs of it yet; it’s only been a handful of heartbeats, even if Izaya has just stared wide-eyed with horror into the chasm of secrets hidden in darkness even from himself. “If your precious Shizu-chan found you, what kind of things would you tell him?”

“I,” Izaya croaks. His hands are still over his mouth, his throat is still flexing as if to choke him before he gives voice to this; but that knife is in his chest, it’s a dagger running him through, and he must speak or die. Even as he considers the possibility, as he wonders over the relative benefit of suffocating on truth unvoiced, if it might not be better than the alternative, honesty slides past his hold, breaking free as easily as he used to toss it aside to lay claim at last to all the voice he has denied it all these years. “I _want_ him.” The word tears past his lips, makes itself into a confession worse than murder, worse than any sin; bad enough to strike even Namie’s mockery to silence, to wipe even her taunting grin off her face and into shock. Her eyes go wide, her mouth comes open, and Izaya shuts his eyes and chokes over a breath like broken glass in his throat.

“I want him so _much_.” He can’t breathe, he can’t think; his mind is going dizzy, his fingers are digging in against his mouth, but the words keep coming, spilling up from him like they’ve been granted force by his own too-long silence. “I’ve been wanting him all this time, he’s everything I’ve ever craved and everything I can’t have and I--” and Izaya manages to break himself off, stemming the tide of his words with a sob that shudders through his shoulders and tips him forward over his knees so he can clutch at his legs and lock his teeth together and stifle his voice to a hiss of pained incoherence instead of that word that he thinks would kill him to hear aloud.

He might avoid saying it, barely, but in the ringing silence of the apartment Izaya is sure the damning word _love_ is hanging as clearly in Namie’s thoughts as it is in the space of his own.


	2. White

Shizuo _knows_ Izaya is in the city.

He’s felt him all day, like a touch at the back of his neck, like the smell of ozone hanging in the air to presage a thunderstorm. It’s kept his shoulders tense, kept his pulse racing, kept him turning at every glimpse of motion and every flutter of shadow real or imagined, until finally Tom tells him to go home early instead of finishing out their usual route for the day. Shizuo appreciates the understanding, or at least he knows he will in the next day or two, once he’s calmed down from the rising tide of tension that has so laid claim to his focus today. In the moment, there’s only one thing he wants to do, and that is to find Orihara Izaya.

It should be easy to track him down. Usually Izaya is there waiting the moment Shizuo turns back to look for him, smirking from the other side of an overpass or watching from an improbably high vantage point. The farthest Shizuo ever has to go to find him are those times when Izaya remains in Shinjuku, and he knows absolutely that Izaya is here, that he has _been_ here all day. Shizuo’s been crossing his path, sometimes so soon after the other’s passing that he can taste Izaya in the air as clearly as the smoke from his cigarettes; but he hasn’t laid eyes on so much as a glimpse of the other. That means that Izaya is deliberately avoiding him, that he has come into the city and means to leave it again without facing the comeuppance that Shizuo has sworn to deliver to him whenever he crosses the boundary into Ikebukuro; and that is something not all the patience in the world can hold Shizuo back from.

He finds the trail easily enough. Izaya is winding over the city, pacing out paths that make no sense unless he’s no more sure of his destination than Shizuo is, but he’s been busy too: Shizuo barely has to stride down three blocks before he catches a suggestion of it in the air, that strange bitter, humid crackle that he can feel crawl across his skin like an itch he can’t reach. Usually it’s enough to grind his teeth and tense his shoulders with the frustration of knowing Izaya has returned to where he shouldn’t be, but Shizuo’s been carrying that knowledge around with him for the full length of the day. He’s on the hunt, now, and that means when he breathes in and tastes Izaya at the back of his tongue it’s a smile that spreads over his face, if one raw and vicious enough to scatter the unseen crowd before him as he turns to follow that trail deeper into the city.

Shizuo has the advantage of speed. Izaya is moving quickly -- he hasn’t outrun Shizuo in all their previous matches by being slow of foot -- but he’s pausing, Shizuo thinks, for conversation or in pursuit of whatever it is he’s doing here, and Shizuo is absolutely focused on his goal. He walks past acquaintances without seeing them, moves past tourist sites without pausing for the flash of cameras or the shouts for directions; his feet carry him forward in long, ground-covering strides, his whole body tipping forward to bear him onward while his hands flex in his pockets, his fingers curling and uncurling over and over while his mind skips ahead to the confrontation to come, to the fight that will be waiting for him. Maybe he can land a blow today, if he’s lucky, maybe he’ll be able to knock Izaya off his feet with a makeshift weapon or send him flying with the direct impact of a punch; the thought is a pleasant one, enough to warm at the inside of Shizuo’s chest with a glow as if of a well-stoked fire, until he’s not even sure if it’s anger or anticipation he’s feeling most keenly as he turns a corner to angle down an alley towards the darker part of the city.

Shizuo is expecting Izaya to be waiting for him. He’s not subtle about his approach and making no effort to disguise himself; as the weight of the other’s presence forms heavy in the air the more he braces himself to round a corner into a waiting gang, or to find the sharp of an unsheathed knife glinting possibilities at him along with the flash of that taunting smile that never touches Izaya’s dark eyes. But in the end there’s no conflict at all, no army of defenders and no open aggression: Shizuo rounds a corner to a dead-end street, and there Izaya is at the far end, his head ducked forward to hide his face in shadow and his shoulders hunched up as he holds a phone to his ear. Shizuo can’t see his face at all, but he doesn’t need the clarity of high cheekbones and shining hair to confirm the identity of the man before him. He can see it in everything else, in the elegance angling the other’s arm even as he hunches into the line of his phone, in the fit of dark slacks around legs made lithe on years of running away; and just in the fact that it is Izaya, and Shizuo would know Izaya anywhere in this world or out of it.

Shizuo comes to a halt at the end of the alley, pausing for a moment to take stock. It truly is a dead-end; the adjourning buildings meet up with a smooth face of concrete, the back of the building on the next street over, rather than the fence that Shizuo knows too well Izaya could scale as quickly as if it were a flat strip of pavement. Even the buildings looming over them are to Shizuo’s advantage; what windows there are are for decoration more than use, with hardly anything in the way of sills and none of the awnings or hanging signs that might provide a handhold to the enterprising escapee Shizuo knows Izaya to be. The only way out of this alley is where Shizuo is standing to cast his shadow forward to merge with the weight of darkness collected at the end, and that means that Izaya isn’t going anywhere without getting past Shizuo himself.

Shizuo shudders an exhale, feeling his mouth start to curve up at the corners without any conscious thought to the action at all. His shoulders ease, his chest relaxes; for a moment even his ire gives way to the adrenaline that hits him, coursing anticipation through his limbs with such strength that the expectation is nearly as satisfying as the conclusion will be. Shizuo takes a step forward from the entrance to the alley, slow but unhesitating as he closes the distance, and draws a deep breath into the full span of his chest before he lets Izaya’s name purr to a rumble of certain intimidation in his throat.

“ _I-za-ya-kun_.” The walls of the alley reflect Shizuo’s voice back to him, add form and weight until the whole air around them is resonating with the sound of the other’s name; and Izaya reacts at once, jerking around from his distraction with gratifying haste. His eyes blow wide, his hand drops from holding his phone to his ear; even from the end of the alleyway Shizuo can see the faint color under his pale skin drain away as if to turn him into a ghost insubstantial enough to escape Shizuo’s hold. It would be enough to stall Shizuo’s steps at some other time, he thinks, to see the unfamiliar shadow of fear painted so clearly across Izaya’s features; but he’s been looking forward to this moment all day, and the force of pent-up anticipation carries him forward and pulls his mouth wider on a smile even as Izaya twists to stumble backwards, as clumsy as Shizuo has even seen him in pursuit of an utterly futile retreat. He runs himself up against the back of the alley in a very few steps, his shoulders hitting hard enough against the resistance that Shizuo can hear the air spill from his lungs in a gasp, and then Shizuo is in front of him, the breadth of his shoulders between Izaya and escape as he looks down into the dark of wide eyes turned up to him from the ghostly white of a bloodless face.

“Izaya,” Shizuo repeats, pulling over the shape of the other’s name to reorient himself, to steady himself in the moment. He knows the features of the face before him, knows the shine of that hair and the angle of those shoulders and the length of those legs; but even after a full day of pursuit, even with the smell of Izaya filling his nose and burning at the back of his throat, there’s something wrong, there’s something strange and foreign in the look in that stare and the set of that mouth, enough to unsettle even Shizuo’s bone-deep recognition into a flicker of near uncertainty. He tightens his jaw and reclaims the frustration he’s been nursing all day to scowl threat at Izaya in front of him. “What are you _doing_ here?”

“Looking for help,” Izaya says, answering with such immediacy that Shizuo is left blinking shock even as Izaya grimaces and closes his mouth as if to catch back the words already spoken. He ducks his head forward so his hair falls over his eyes and all Shizuo can see of him is the set of his mouth as he struggles with something unsaid. “I was...I’m trying to solve a problem.”

Shizuo scoffs. “ _You’re_ more of a problem than anything else in the city.”

“I know,” Izaya says, again with that sudden spill of sound; this time he actually hisses, as if frustrated by the giveaway of his voice as Shizuo rocks back with surprise at the words. Izaya gasps a breath, sounding like he’s fighting for air, like he’s trying to breathe past a knot in his throat, before he speaks again, rushing through the words like they’re being forced out of him. “It’s my problem that I’m trying to solve. I made a stupid mistake and now I--” and he claps his hand over his mouth, pressing hard as a sound alarmingly close to a whimper strains in his throat.

Shizuo doesn’t take a step back, but he thinks his lack of retreat is more out of instinct too dug-in to be easily overridden than from conscious thought. Aggression is rapidly fading from his mind, giving way as quickly as confusion comes in to take its place. Izaya is still ducked forward over his hands pressing over his mouth, looking like he’s fighting back a wave of nausea, or like he’s trying to hold back a tide of words; his shoulders are quivering, trembling as if with some far greater force than what it would take to press his hands to his mouth. Shizuo frowns at the dark of Izaya’s bowed head, feeling his own shoulders tense with the stress of uncertainty more even than what Izaya usually brings with him. His fingers curl in, starting in on fists out of some half-formed thought to self-defense; but Izaya isn’t reaching for a knife, isn’t turning to run, and even Shizuo’s paranoia can’t find anything but honest strain in the line of the other’s shoulders before him.

“What’s going on?” he finally asks, delivering the words with the force of a blow. “Tell me, Izaya.”

“I…” Izaya starts, the word muffled but clear behind the weight of his hands. For a moment Shizuo thinks he’s going to stay silent, that he’s going to bow his head and simply refuse to speak; but then the strain in Izaya’s shoulders gives way, tension slumps into the weight of resignation, and he lets his hands drop from his mouth as he gasps an exhale as if he’s been holding his breath instead of just staying silent.

“I’m cursed,” he says. His voice is different than Shizuo has ever heard it before: it’s still Izaya’s, still audibly the familiar high lilt of the other’s tone, but the taunt that has been everpresent before is stripped free, all the emotion of amusement or irritation or mockery flattened to draw it down to flat neutrality, as if the figure before him is some kind of machine speaking with Izaya’s voice instead of Izaya himself. Shizuo’s spine prickles, discomfort sliding under his skin to tremble against the top of his head, but Izaya doesn’t look up to meet his eyes, just goes on speaking in that strange, emotionless tone. “I took on a job from the yakuza yesterday and picked up a curse along with my payment.”

“Sure you did,” Shizuo says. “Am I really supposed to believe you’re _cursed_?”

“It’s the truth,” Izaya says, still speaking towards the pavement between their feet instead of looking up to meet Shizuo’s stare. There’s a breath of hesitation, as if he’s fighting with himself again, and then: “It’s all the truth,” in another rush of an exhale like it’s forced from him.

Shizuo frowns. “ _What’s_ the truth?”

“Everything,” Izaya says at once. “Whatever I say, whatever I do, I can’t--” He chokes, the words breaking off for a moment into a sound eerily close to a sob, before he blurts out another rush of words. “I can’t lie. Out loud or in writing or...or in my head, it’s forcing me to be honest.”

Shizuo coughs a humorless laugh. “That’s insane.”

“I don’t care whether you think I’m sane or not,” Izaya snaps back, with something of his old heat under the words. “I just want you to leave me _alone_.”

“You’re the one who came into _my_ city,” Shizuo growls. “I told you not to come back here.”

“I’m not here to pick a fight,” Izaya says. “I’m just trying to find someone who can help me get this _off_ before I say something I don’t want to.”

Shizuo scoffs. “What, worried you’re going to spoil one of your plots before you ruin somebody’s life like you intended?”

“I’m worried I’m going to ruin _my_ life.” Izaya’s looking up now, glaring at Shizuo from under the shadow of his hair; there’s something almost comforting about the heat in his eyes, like they’ve reverted back to the familiarity of their usual bite and cut instead of the strange near-agony that has been choking Izaya’s words unvoiced in his throat. “I’m usually trying to get your attention when I come into this damn city but I assure you today you are the last person I want to see.”

“It’s not as if I _want_ \--” Shizuo starts, rejection rising to his lips with the ease of familiarity before it breaks off to the weight of comprehension moving at a far slower pace than the grit of his usual temper. He rocks back on his heels and frowns hard at Izaya before him. “You’re _trying_ to get my attention?”

Izaya’s eyes widen. What color had returned to his cheeks blanches back to white as he sets his jaw tight and shakes his head with force. “I,” he starts; and then his voice dies again, choking off to silence in his throat once more. Shizuo stares at Izaya, watching his lips tremble, watching his throat work; until finally Izaya grimaces, and shuts his eyes, and ducks his head forward again as he gasps over a straining exhale.

“Yes,” he says, biting off the word with such force that Shizuo can feel the sharp edge as of a knife stemming anything else. Izaya tips his shoulders away, turning as if to interpose the barrier of his body between Shizuo’s startled gaze and the shadows cast across his face. “Move, I want to leave.”

“Why do you want my attention?” Shizuo asks. “You _hate_ me.”

“I don’t,” Izaya says. “I don’t hate you.” He hisses over a breath; Shizuo can hear the struggle for the air in his throat, like he’s inhaling past some unbearable knot. “Let me go and I’ll go home to Shinjuku, I won’t stay here another minute longer than I have to.”

“Tell me first,” Shizuo says. Izaya ducks forward, moving fast as if to slip past Shizuo while the other’s guard is down, but Shizuo’s spent too long chasing the flip of that dark coat, has spent too long following that biting scent through the streets of his city. His hand moves on its own accord to lash out and clutch against Izaya’s arm; when he moves it’s to force the other to move, to shove him back by a stumbling step towards the back wall of the alley. “What do you mean, you don’t hate me? You’ve been trying to kill me since the day we met.”

Izaya coughs a laugh. There’s no humor on the sound at all; it’s closer to a sob, Shizuo thinks, than any kind of real human amusement. “As if anything I did could ever really hurt you.” He pulls against Shizuo’s hold on his arm but the force is weak, nothing like enough to actually break free, and he gives it up almost as soon as he’s made the attempt, well before Shizuo can decide whether to maintain his grip or not. “You forgot whatever I did to you as quickly as you forgot about me.”

“ _Forget_ about you,” Shizuo scoffs. “I wish I could. If you would just stay out of the city I could--”

“ _No_ ,” Izaya says, and there’s an edge to his voice, a viciousness like Shizuo has never heard before. It’s enough to stifle Shizuo’s voice at his lips, enough to loosen if not to release his hold on the other’s arm; but Izaya doesn’t try to pull free, doesn’t try to take advantage to wiggle himself loose and make good on his escape. “You barely remember me now. You only think about me because I _make_ you, because I get in your way and I get in your city and I _keep_ you looking at me.” He gasps a breath, struggling for it as if he’s trying to stifle his words again, but no sooner has he filled his lungs than he’s spilling another rush of sound, giving voice to speech like a tsunami, as if some dam in him has given way and all he can do is drown beneath the flood breaking over him. “That’s all I really want, that’s all I’ve _ever_ wanted, is you looking at me, you _seeing_ me. But you don’t look, you don’t see, you’ve never _cared_ and I can’t make you care but I can make you angry, as if that counts for anything, but it’s better than you going on without me.”

Shizuo stares at Izaya. The other’s head is ducked down, his hair is shadowing across his face to half-hide his expression, but Shizuo can see the shift of his lips, can see the tremor of emotion at them and the strain cording the tendons in Izaya’s neck and against the tension of his shoulders. It’s Izaya, unmistakably, from the shadow of his hair to the fit of his arm in Shizuo’s hold to the tenor of his voice; but Shizuo’s never seen him like this, never _heard_ him like this, as if every word is a sob, as if every sentence is a wail of truth tearing itself free from a miser’s tight fist.

“What?” Shizuo says. His own voice feels strange at his lips, stripped of any edge of anger; there’s just confusion, now, weak and trembling, as if he’s the one shaking in a too-strong hold. “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Izaya.”

“It’s not that hard,” Izaya chokes out. “Hasn’t anyone ever confessed to you before?” And he lifts his head, bringing his gaze up while Shizuo is still struggling over the implication of that. There are tears across his face, paths of wet trailing from the smudged-in dark of his lashes across the fevered heat at his cheeks, but Shizuo sees his eyes and can’t look away, can’t so much as blink to dislodge his attention from Izaya’s gaze. It’s the same eyes he’s always known, the brown shaded into a color very nearly crimson, as if saturated with the blood that Izaya drew from Shizuo on their first meeting, but what has always been a wall before, as impenetrable-bright as a mirror, is depth, now, all the dark weight of an endless pool, as if the tears on Izaya’s face have dissolved some long-standing defensive barrier. It’s like staring into Izaya’s soul, like catching a glimpse of something Shizuo hadn’t been sure truly existed at all; and then Izaya gasps a deep breath, and all the tension still remaining in his shoulders slumps to sagging weight.

“I love you, Shizuo,” he says, delivering the words like a death sentence, like he’s reading out a judgment of guilt. “I’ve loved you from the day I met you.” Shizuo stares at him, shocked right out of his confusion by the ringing impact of those words against his thoughts; Izaya holds his gaze for a moment, for a single resonant heartbeat of time. Then his arm flexes, pulling with sudden, startling strength, and Shizuo’s slack hold gives way as Izaya twists away to reclaim his arm and duck his face into shadow once again. There’s a moment of silence, the air hanging heavy with expectation between them; but in the end Izaya moves instead of speaking to push roughly past Shizuo’s shoulder and walk away down the alley. Shizuo listens to the sound of his footsteps, heavier and slower than he’s ever heard from Izaya before; by the time he turns to look back Izaya is long gone, leaving nothing to tell of his presence but heat at Shizuo’s fingertips and an electricity fast-fading from the air around him.

Shizuo feels the echo of Izaya’s words in his head long after the sound of the other’s footsteps have vanished out of tracing.


	3. Unvarnished

The night air is cool against the back of Izaya’s neck. At the street level the buildings loom high, the solid weight of them enough to pull apart the chill force of the breeze into no more than ruffling whispers, but here at the edge of a soaring rooftop there’s nothing between Izaya and the air, nothing to stop the wind from curling around the fall of his hair like a lover’s fingers stroking cool across his skin instead of heat. It’s a comfort, of sorts; if Izaya holds still enough he can let his thoughts scatter to the wind, imagines he can watch the fragments of reality drift like ash towards the ground far below the edge of the rooftop on which he’s perched. It’s a relief, in a way: as if all the burdens that have been so determined to crush him out of existence are lifted to weightlessness, as if he has stepped back and away to watch himself with as much objective distance as he ever watches the people filling the city streets.

He doesn’t turn when he hears the hinges of the door behind him grate protest over their movement. There’s a reason he chose this rooftop, and this particularly loud door, to linger on for the last hours; but even without the warning of the sound, he knows who it is at his back. He feels like he’s always known, somehow, as if his whole life has been leading to this precise point, as if he has dreamt this moment over a thousand forgotten nights, as if it has perhaps been formed from his own fears and nightmares as much as by circumstance itself. He can feel the presence in the air, too, a weight to thicken the wind around him, to tighten in his chest and draw his breathing rough on the sudden increase of effort required, but Izaya doesn’t turn, doesn’t move towards a path of escape. He stays where he is, staring sightlessly down at the street below him as every sense tunes itself behind him, frames itself to the shape of the man standing just before the shut door at his back, until Izaya hears the breath Shizuo takes as clearly as if he were struggling over the shape of the inhale at his own lips.

“It took a while to find you.”

There’s no judgment on Shizuo’s tone, none of the anger that has so characterized all their past interactions, the rage that has always been Izaya’s to play with, that has always been the best leash Izaya could manage to restrain the unrestrainable. Izaya feels the absence like a physical loss, as if he’s watching something beloved crumble out of existence before his very eyes. He shuts them to block out the street below, wishing distantly he had the will to lift his hands to cover his ears too, to shroud himself in silence from the sound of footsteps approaching slow but steady from the stairwell door behind him. But he’s strengthless, he gave up all his power along with those choking words in the alley hours hence; so he just stands, offering the passive surrender that is the last thing he has to give as he listens to the sound of footsteps pacing closer to stand just behind him. There’s a pause of quiet, a breath of silence freighted with understanding more than with tension; and then Shizuo takes an inhale, and when he speaks Izaya can feel the words run through his very bones where he stands.

“Tell me.”

There’s no detail to the words. Izaya could push back against them, could demand greater clarity, could play the game of denial and evasion and duck and weave his way through this conversation as a last effort to preserve himself from catastrophe. But catastrophe has already found him, it had made a home for itself within the beat of his heart before he ever stirred towards consciousness this morning; and in the strange deep-water clarity of his honest thoughts, Izaya can admit that he’s tired of running. So he draws a deep breath into his lungs, pulling it past the ease of his throat and into the span of his ribs, savouring the feeling of it even as the awareness of his own intentional delay saps any of the relief it might grant; and then he gusts an exhale, and he lets the words spill from him in a rush.

“It’s strange to realize it’s been years.” The words are a relief even as Izaya speaks them, unknotting something he has carried so long within him he had forgotten it was there, had forgotten was a burden at all. The speaking of them makes him feel light, weightless, as if far from toppling over the edge before him he might lift right off the ground entirely, might escape his present situation by rising rather than falling. In the darkness of his shut eyes, he could almost make himself believe it true, were it not for his enforced honesty with himself. “It was just a crush, at first.” His throat tenses; he chokes a gasp that cracks into a humorless laugh. “I suppose it wasn’t. Things are never easy with you, Shizu-chan, not even being hopelessly in unrequited love.”

Izaya tips his head back, turning his face up to the sky even though his eyes are still shut. He can imagine the flecks of the stars in the darkness overhead, imagines he can feel the strengthless glow of their light against his face. “I would have been your friend, at first. It would have been enough to be close to you, to have you see me the way you see Shinra or Dotachin or Celty, even if you never loved me like I loved you. But you didn’t like me.” Izaya rocks a shoulder into a shrug, dismissing the trauma of years hence as the unchangeable fact it has become, with the weight of time to harden it. “I knew you wouldn’t. Or I was afraid you wouldn’t. It didn’t make a difference. You hated me before I ever did anything and the only thing to do was to keep your eyes on me. If you were going to hate me I wanted you to be as consumed by it as I was by you.”

Izaya takes another breath and sighs it out, slow, like he’s tasting the smoke of one of Shizuo’s cigarettes at his lips, lingering over a habit no less self-destructive to his own existence than Shizuo’s is to his. “It wasn’t easy. You might be human but you’re not normal, surely you know that already. I had to keep up with you; if you caught me you’d win, and then the chase would be over, and you would never look at me again. So I kept running, and you kept chasing, and so we went.”

Izaya opens his eyes slowly, lifting his lashes until the glint of the stars overhead creeps into his vision, until his gaze is full of the sparkle of something beautiful and impossibly, untouchably far away. “I would have kept you chasing me forever, if I could have.”

There’s the sound of an exhale from beside him. Izaya doesn’t turn to look. “Were you happy?”

Izaya huffs a laugh that curls at the corners of his mouth and burns at the back of his eyes. “Are you kidding?” he asks. “Of course I wasn’t happy.” He ducks his head forward to give up the glow of the stars for the line of the rooftops, for the streets of the city, for the illusion of height he has bought from the support of the building beneath him. “But you rejecting me would have killed me.” He shapes a smile at his lips, drawing the line of it over his features with all the coarse lines of a sketch. “Lying to myself was easier. I’ve never been anything but a coward, after all.”

Silence falls like a blanket around them. Izaya keeps his gaze on the streets below; it’s easier than looking up at the sky, easier than feeling the ache in his chest that comes with the impossible want hanging above him. His throat is relaxed, his breathing easier; it seems strange, to have such comfort granted him by the satisfaction of a curse that has so shattered the one thing that he has desperately clung to in a lifetime of flippant objectivity. He might tell himself it’s a relief, that this is for the best, that ridding himself of this unbearable secret is a benefit; but he can’t convince himself of that, not when he can feel the shattered fragments of his heart melting and bleeding through the gaps between his ribs. He wonders how long he can stand here, wonders how long Shizuo is going to wait, wonders when he’s going to leave; and it’s then, just as the thought flickers through the haze of resignation in Izaya’s thoughts, that Shizuo draws a deep breath from beside him.

“I like you better when you’re honest.” The sound is surprising, as much as the words themselves; it’s noise more than meaning that brings Izaya’s head up, that turns his gaze to meet the dark of Shizuo’s night-shadowed eyes. He’s regretting it even as he moves, his whole consciousness cringing back from facing whatever is there to be seen in Shizuo’s expression; but Shizuo isn’t staring at him, isn’t waiting for Izaya to turn. He’s moving, shifting his weight as quickly as Izaya’s head turns to track him, until by the time Izaya’s lashes are dipping on a startled blink Shizuo is ducking in towards him to press his mouth flush against the part of the other’s lips.

It’s not a passionate kiss. There’s none of the force behind it that Izaya used to imagine, before fantasies became a danger to be avoided instead of a welcome indulgence: Shizuo’s hands stay in his pockets, his weight stays on his heels. There’s nothing holding Izaya still, no wall and no bruising grip; just the open air around him, and his feet at edge of a ledge, and Shizuo’s lips settling against his own with more delicacy than Izaya would have dreamed Shizuo master of. And yet: Izaya’s lashes flutter, Izaya’s heart skips, and under that featherlight touch his mouth goes soft as the tension of years melts like dew before morning sunlight. He’s easing, his breath and his shoulders and his mouth and his existence, all of him giving way and giving in to perfect pliancy against Shizuo’s mouth. Izaya takes a breath to taste smoke, vanilla, the dust of destruction and the sweet of sugar on his tongue, and just like that Shizuo is drawing away, pulling free of Izaya’s mouth as if he doesn’t even notice the magnetism that rocks Izaya forward in helpless pursuit of that contact even as it vanishes.

“I have to go,” Shizuo says, speaking while Izaya’s lashes are still fluttering, while Izaya’s heart is still struggling to return to its rhythm in a world that has lost all shape and structure. When Izaya manages to look up Shizuo is looking at him with something strange in his eyes, a shadow at his lashes and a crease at his forehead that is so unfamiliar it takes Izaya a long moment to recognize it as the simplicity of uncertainty on a face where he can only recall seeing anger before. Shizuo takes a step backwards, his footing as unsteady as his expression; his hand comes from his pocket to lift to his mouth as if to touch for a cigarette not there. His fingers press to his lips, his lashes skip over a beat of time; Izaya can see his throat work on a swallow. “I have to...think.” He hesitates for a moment, still staring at Izaya like he’s become something Shizuo’s never seen before; and then he turns, shifting his weight on his heel and striding back towards the door to the rooftop in long, unflinching strides. Izaya watches him go, feeling his heart stuttering in his chest and his lips glowing hot with the fever of hope he contracted from that moment of contact; and then the door swings shut, and latches with a _click_ , and Izaya shuts his eyes to shudder over an exhale. He stands where he is for a long moment, still and silent in a world spinning around him; and then he tips his head back, and he opens his eyes to look up at the stars over his head.

The feeling of hope is foreign, and exhilarating, and terrifying, and without the means to hide from it, all Izaya can do is let it steal his breath while the sky turns with slow grace over him.


End file.
